


Green Hat Blue Hat I-Love-You Hat

by Temporarily



Series: Temporarily's South Park Ship Dump [5]
Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Eric Cartman is Done With This Bullshit, Fluff and Angst, Hats, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sharing Clothes, Stan Does Not Like Football, Trope Subversion/Inversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28447812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Temporarily/pseuds/Temporarily
Summary: The issue was, as Kyle got older, he grew out of his hat.
Relationships: Kyle Broflovski/Stan Marsh
Series: Temporarily's South Park Ship Dump [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2083716
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	Green Hat Blue Hat I-Love-You Hat

**Author's Note:**

> Back in yee olden days of my introduction to Style fics, I noticed the following trope: At your typical South Park High, Kyle Broflovski’s poor gay heart is breaking as he pines for his best friend, one Stan Marsh, the resident Football Star and Lady’s Man.  
> And I take issue with this trope. First of all, my headcanon high school Stan is not a jock. He's an angsty e-boy who likes music and nerdy board games. Second of all, he's too much of a wreck to be boyfriend material and Kenny is already the token fuckboy.  
> So I took this trope and I did what I do with all tropes which displease me. I reversed the fuck out of it.

The issue was, as Kyle got older, he grew out of his hat. 

At first Stan thought this was a good thing. Kyle was braver than him, choosing to let go of this relic from their childhood while he stubbornly clung to his worn, frayed cap, still in denial about how most of the puffball’s fluff had fallen out. It was something he admired about his friend, this ability to move on.

Then Stan realized that it was a really, really bad thing because Kyle without his hat meant seeing all of Kyle’s face and hair. Whether it was loose in wild curls or cropped short in a choppy auburn fuzz if he grew tired of dealing with it, Stan found his friend’s hair extremely distracting. At this very moment, he was standing by their lockers in the after-school rush, unable to register a single thing Kyle was saying as he gaped like an idiot at his hair, his face, the little freckle he had on the shell of his left ear. 

“Stan?  _ Dude! _ ”

“Hmm?” 

“Were you listening to a word I was saying?” 

“Oh, yeah totally. You were talking about Rebecca?”

“I  _ was  _ talking about Rebecca, but now I’m talking about Milly!” Stan grinned sheepishly.

“Sorry dude.” Halfway through their sophomore year, Kyle finally hit his,  _ Holy shit girls are kinda hot _ , phase. Stan had been there and done that in middle school. The next new thing for Stanley Marsh’s love life was suffering a bisexual crisis. It was less of a,  _ Holy shit I might not be opposed to sucking dick,  _ phase and more of a  _ Please help this one particular boy is unbearably attractive _ phase. 

Scratch that, they weren’t phases, they were indisputable facts of his life he’d been ignoring up until now. 

But Kyle with girls? He lured them in with good grades and smart shirts. He used his,  _ the cute boy your mother would approve of you dating for once _ aspect to his advantage. Then he swept them off their feet in the back of his father’s car with a talented tongue and an ambition most people pegged as Kenny’s area of expertise—only to inevitably let them down gently. The girls were left heart-sore, but unable truly hate him. After all, no one could accuse Kyle of being a playboy like Kenny or Clyde. He was  _ Kyle Brofloski, _ charming and empathetic and morally rigid and probably going to find a way to end world hunger and make every nation live in harmony—whether they wanted to or not—before he turned thirty.

It was torturous to witness this cycle from the vantage point of the best friend Kyle talked about all his drama with. The best friend who also happened to have a Big Gay Crush on him.

Sensing his distraction, Kyle sighed and asked, “Am I boring you?” 

“What? No! Go right ahead, I’ll listen, I just spaced out for a second.” 

“Are you sure? I know you’re not really into this kind of thing.” Stan felt a burning hand of fear still his beating heart with a vice grip, squeezing ever tighter as claw-like nails punctured its vulnerable flesh. That hand was surely about to rip his heart out and throw it on the floor for everyone to see in a painful, bloody splatter.

“W-what? What, makes you say that?” he managed to ask, with minimal stammering and an awkward laugh.

“Well, you’re just the kind of guy who set his eyes on one girl and sticks to her instead of flirting around like I am.”  _ Oh thank god, _ he was talking about Wendy. He didn’t know. Stan forced a grin and a normal sounding laugh. Kyle smiled and accused him of being a hopeless romantic. 

Then he started recounting the tale of how he’d debauched Milly last night. 

Christ this was painful. How was Stan supposed to keep a straight face, or stop the blood from rushing to his cheeks and other extremities, or avoid breaking down and dissolving into a sobbing frustrated mess when Kyle was talking about this? 

Maybe if he was wearing a damn hat it’d help. He might look dorky enough for Stan to concentrate on the conversation. With what he thought must be a stroke of genius, Stan took his hat off and plopped it on Kyle’s head. There. Problem solved.

“Um… thanks?” The redhead looked mildly confused, but didn’t question it. Stan nodded, smiled, pretended he was listening as Kyle continued to talk, and resisted the urge to scream out loud over the giant mistake he’d just made. Kyle with his hat was just as irresistible as Kyle without a hat. Maybe it wasn’t the hat, maybe he was doomed to see Kyle like this in any hat from now on. But since Kyle was wearing  _ his  _ hat, Stan was struck with the sudden urge to let every single person in the hallway know this boy was  _ his _ . He wanted—hell, he didn’t know what he wanted. Maybe just some way to let every single girl to know that they’d better stop flirting with Kyle because everything he was belonged to  _ Stan Marsh. _

Except that was just a fantasy. And a borderline creepy one at that. The reality of the situation was that if any of Kyle’s affection was exclusive towards Stan, it was only in a platonic sense. Which was unfair because Stan was exclusively Kyle’s and being hopelessly in love like this was ruining Stan, making him want to go home and hug his elderly dog and drink something to forget how sappy and whipped he was.

“Are you okay dude?” Kyle asked. “You look like someone just told you Sparky died.” Stan hesitated, then leaned forward and scooped his best friend into a tight hug. Kyle’s nose pressed against his neck and Stan prayed he couldn’t tell how desperate he was from sheer proximity. 

He could still have this. At least there was this. 

“…Stan? Sparky didn’t actually die, did he?!”

“Nah.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m good.”

“You sure you’re good?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“You don’t seem good.”

“I promise I’m good Kyle. Everything’s fine.” Kyle relented, leaned in closer and wrapped his arms around Stan’s waist.

“Okay. You’re fine, and everything’s good.”

The simple issue was this: Kyle got sick and tired of waiting, so he took some terrible advice from Kenny. Maybe it was petty of him to devalue other people’s feelings for the sake of determining whether Stan got jealous, but it was a distraction. Except Stan never did, he just looked bored, and it was driving Kyle insane. 

The more complicated issue was that anybody who looked at these fools interacting for five minutes could figure out what was happening, but no one knew what to do about it. Instead, the rest of the town waited for them to get it. Wendy waited, Kenny waited, Butters waited with the patience of a saint and complete faith that everything will turn out alright. Craig’s gang didn’t wait so much as casually observe, primarily with indifference and occasional annoyance when the issue became particularly obvious. The boys’ parents monitored their love lives. Would they find a nice girlfriend, or would the little voice in the back of their heads whispering, “What if...?” turn out to be right in the end? 

The only one whose patience was running thin was Cartman. Eric Cartman didn’t have time for this bullshit. He’d been standing around while these two gaywads made moony eyes at each other for  _ fucking years now _ , and if no one was going to do something about it soon, he was prepared to take matters into his own hands.

But even he could wait a little longer. 


End file.
